Creating realistic condensation for beverage renders comes up in just about every motion designers career. This seemingly simple effect is one that people often ask me about. How do you make the condensation look real and beautiful, but not over think it?

Lucky for us in Cinema 4D R18 they released a new effector called the Push Apart Effector. With this new effector and some smart lighting and shading, we are going to make some killer Tallboys!

What will I Learn?

In the first of following three videos, you will learn how to set up your condensation using standard Mograph tools in R18.

In the second tutorial, you will learn how to light and shade our Tallboy using Cinema 4D’s Physical Renderer.

In the last tutorial, you will learn how to achieve the same look using Solid Angle’s Arnold renderer for Cinema 4D.

What do I need?

Cinema 4D R18 Broadcast or Studio

Your own HDRI Maps for lighting or HDRI Studio Rig for Physical

Your own HDRI Maps for lighting or HDRI Link

Solid Angle’s Arnold Renderer (for part three only)

A Can model (either from the content browser or you can find a free one here)

Part One: Realistic Condensation Setup with Mograph

Part Two: Lighting and Shading Condensation in Physical

Part Three: Lighting and Shading Condensation in Arnold for Cinema 4D.

I usually tell the droplets not to be visible to refraction rays. That way, you don’t get any odd issues with droplets penetrating the glass/plastic. The tradeoff is that other droplets won’t appear in refraction either. If that trick doesn’t work, I’ve got a method I used for LIFE WTR that I can share sometime.

I may update with an Octane version, but I’m trying to save myself from doing four tutorials everytime I do one. 🙂 The last tut I did with takes, I used Octane. Trying to spread the love around. Thanks for the comment!

I love the pace of your tuts, really good stuff. This one had a ton of great tips.

Just in case you don’t update it for Octane, how would you go setting up the Fresnel in the aluminum and water materials? I’d love to know. It kills me that there is no direct way of doing it as far as I can tell.

Hi Chad, as ever, great tutorials, learning loads watching you guys. I was just wondering, how do you create the tab ‘Models’ you mentioned you created yourself…I have a bunch of models i’d like to keep in the C4D filing system. Thank Chad, Mark P

Love your work with the Arnold tuts Chad! Please don’t hold back on doing more. I’d also be keen to see how you’d approach a similar technique using multiple refractive ray depths, like droplets on a glass bottle.. Thanks!

Thank you Chad – excellent tutorial. Sorry to stray from the topic of droplets, but is this the best way to do seamless floors outside of Physical Render (Arnold, Octane, Redshift, …whatever)? What if you don’t want the “ground” to be reflective? One thing I miss in other engines is the easy setup you guys provided with the seamless floor in HDRI Studio.

I was wondering…how would you approach the texture placement if we wanna try to reproduce the reference can adding the logo or product name? I’m having troubles lighting up textures applied to materials in the scene with your light setup.
Would you go for a new 3D piece of the can and apply a “cut out” graphic to that? If so what material setup do you suggest? Or would you go for multiple materials on the same can model, where you already apply the aluminum?